This text considers how multinationals transfer structures, policies and practices across national borders. It is contributed to by experts in the field of employment relations, and combines empirical material with a theoretical approach. The essays advance comparative institutionalist theory at both the macro-level and the micro-level.
This book was first published in 2011. The current financial and economic crisis has negatively underlined the vital role of multinational companies (MNCs) in our daily lives. The breakdown and crisis of flagship MNCs, such as Enron, WorldCom, Lehman Brothers, Toyota and General Motors, does not merely reveal the problems of corporate malfeasance and market dysfunction. It also raises important questions, both for the public and the academic community, about the use and misuse of power by MNCs in the wider society, as well as the exercise of power by key actors within internationally operating firms. This book examines how issues of power and politics affect MNCs at three different levels; the macro-level, the meso-level and the micro-level. This wide-ranging analysis shows not only that power matters but also how and why it matters, pointing to the political interactions of key power holders and actors within the MNC, both managers and employees.
The book offers an inquiry into the construction of employment practices in a multinational company across Western and Eastern Europe. In the complex corporate and host-country influences, social interaction between the firm and local actors is presented as the underlying social mechanism through which work practices are constructed.
For advanced students and researchers in the field, this handbook focuses on familiarizing the reader with the fundamentals of applied human resource management whilst contextualizing practice within wider theoretical considerations.
Some of the key questions in employment relations, comparative business, and globalization revolve around the extent to which businesses embody a national business system, and what happens when these employment models are exported to other national settings. By exploring the variety of ways in which US multinationals deal with these issues, and their reception, when operating in Europe, Phil Almond, Anthony Ferner, and their contributors examine the interaction between globalization and national 'Varieties of Capitalism'. Using the findings of a four-year international exploration of the management of employment relations in US multinationals in the UK, Germany, Ireland, and Spain, this book examines what is distinctively 'American' about these companies, and how this notion is exported. The process is shown to be one that is not a technical managerial one, but one that is highly political, and 'negotiated', in which groups and individuals at different levels within the company try to influence the terms of transfer. These questions are not only of theoretical importance, but also of practical significance in terms of the transfer of management knowledge and 'best practice'. The book will be of interest to academics, researchers, and advanced students of HRM, International Business, and Organization Studies, as well as HR practitioners concerned with US multinationals operating in Europe.
This book investigates the transfer of parent country organizational practices by the retailers to their Chinese subsidiaries, providing insights into employment relations in multinational retail firms and changing labour-management systems in China, as well as their impact on consumer culture.
This important Handbook explores and evaluates dynamic environments and the appropriate strategic responses to them in the 21st century. Drawing together a collection of 29 original chapters, the Handbook makes an invaluable contribution to theory and practice by stimulating disciplined, rigorous and imaginative enquiry into the relationship between strategy and foresight. Leading scholars in the field of strategic management are brought together to offer innovative and multi-disciplinary perspectives on the past, present and future of strategy formation and foresight. In so doing, they challenge research in four key areas: strategy and foresight processes; strategy innovation for the future; understanding the future; and strategically responding to the future. The Handbook of Research on Strategy and Foresight is a comprehensive resource that will be invaluable for academics, students and practitioners interested in this important phenomenon.
Over a quarter of a century after the fall of the Berlin Wall and 10 years after their accession to the European Union (EU), Central and Eastern Europe Countries (CEECs) still show marked differences with the rest of Europe in the fields of labour, work and industrial relations. This book presents a detailed and original analysis of labour and social transformations in the CEECs. By examining a wide range of countries in Central Europe, Labour and Social Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe offers a comprehensive and contrasting view of labour developments in Central and Eastern Europe. Chapters explore three related issues. The first deals with the understanding of the complex process of Europeanization applied in the sphere of labour, employment and industrial relations. The second issue refers to the attempt to link the Europeanization approach with an analysis mobilizing the theoretical concept of "dependent capitalism(s)". The third issue refers to the cumulative trends of labour weakening and labour awakening that has emerged, in particular in the aftermath of the crisis beginning in 2007-2008. This book will be of interest to academics, policy makers and stakeholders at European and national level in the EU member states.
Transnational trade union action has expanded significantly over the last few decades and has taken a variety of shapes and trajectories. This book is concerned with understanding the spatial extension of trade union action, and in particular the development of new forms of collective mobilization, network-building, and forms of regulation that bridge local and transnational issues. Through the work of leading international specialists, this collection of essays examines the process and dynamic of transnational trade union action and provides analytical and conceptual tools to understand these developments. The research presented here emphasizes that the direction of transnational solidarity remains contested, subject to experimentation and negotiation, and includes studies of often overlooked developments in transition and developing countries with original analyses from the European Union and NAFTA areas. Providing a fresh examination of transnational solidarity, this volume offers neither a romantic or overly optimistic narrative of a borderless unionism, nor does it fall into a fatalistic or pessimistic account of international union solidarity. Through original research conducted at different levels, this book disentangles the processes and dynamics of institution building and challenges the conventional national based forms of unionism that prevailed in the latter half of the twentieth century.
